Domain (8 page)

Foletta’s right, he’s good. Maybe he’s not as good when he isn’t controlling the conversation
. “Mick, let’s talk a moment about your father’s work? On Friday, you mentioned four
Ahau
, three
Kankin
—”

“Humanity’s day of doom. I knew you recognized the date.”

“It’s just a Mayan legend.”

“There’s truth in many legends.”

“Then you do believe we’re all going to the in less than four months?”

Mick stares at the floor, shaking his head.

“A simple yes or no will suffice.”

“Don’t play head games, Dominique.”

“How am I playing head games?”

“You know damn well the question as stated reeks of paranoid schizophrenia and delusions of—”

“Mick, it’s a simple question.”
He’s getting upset. Good
.

“You’re engaging me in a battle of wits to find weaknesses. Don’t. It’s not very effective, and you’ll lose, which means we’ll all lose.”

“You’re asking me to evaluate your ability to reenter society. How can I do that without asking questions?”

“Ask your questions, but don’t set me up for failure. I’ll be glad to discuss my father’s theories with you, but only if you’re really interested. If your goal is to see how far you can push me, then just give me the goddam Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test and be done with it.”

“How am I setting you up for failure?”

Mick is on his feet, moving toward her. Dominique’s heart races. She reaches for the pen.

“The very nature of your question condemns me. It’s like asking a reverend if his wife knows he masturbates. Either way, he looks bad. If I answer no about the doomsday prediction, then I’ll have to justify why I suddenly changed my opinion after eleven years. Foletta will interpret that as a ruse designed to fool the evaluation committee. If I say yes, then you’ll concur that I’m just another psycho who believes the sky is falling.”

“Then how do you propose I evaluate your sanity? I can’t just skirt the issue.”

“No, but you can at least examine the evidence with an open mind before you rush to judgment. Some of the greatest minds in history were labeled mad, until the truth came out.”

Mick sits down on the opposite end of the bed. Dominique’s skin tingles. She is unsure if she is excited or frightened, or perhaps both. She shifts her weight, uncrossing her legs, the pen held nonchalantly in her hand.
He’s close enough to strangle me, but if we were in a bar, I’d probably be flirting
…

“Dominique, it’s very important, very very important that we trust each other. I need your help, and you need mine, you just don’t know it yet. On the soul of my mother I swear I’ll never lie to you, but you have to promise to listen with an open mind.”

“All right, I’ll listen objectively. But the question still stands. Do you believe mankind will end on December 21?”

Mick leans forward, elbows on knees. He stares at the floor, pinching the bridge of his nose between both index fingers. “I assume you’re Catholic?”

“I was born Catholic, but raised in a Jewish household since I was thirteen. What about you?”

“My own mother was Jewish, my father, Episcopalian. Do you consider yourself a religious person?”

“Not really.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in evil?”

“Evil?” The question startles her. “That’s a bit broad. Can you clarify that for me?”

“I’m not talking about men committing heinous acts of murder. I’m referring to evil as an entity unto itself, part of the very fabric of existence.” Mick looks up, his eyes focusing on her. “For instance, Judeo-Christian belief is that evil first personified itself by entering the Garden of Eden disguised as a serpent, tempting Eve to bite the apple.”

“As a psychiatrist, I don’t believe any of us are born evil, or good, for that matter. I believe we have the capacity for both. Free will allows us to choose.”

“And what if … what if something was influencing your free will without you knowing it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Some people believe there’s a malevolent force out there, part of Nature. An intelligence unto itself that has existed on this planet throughout man’s history.”

“You lost me. What does any of this have to do with the doomsday prophesy?”

“As a rational person, you ask me if I believe humanity is about to end. As a rational person, I ask you to explain to me why every successful ancient civilization predicted the end of humanity. As a rational person, I ask you to tell me why every major religion foretells of an apocalypse and waits for a Messiah to return to rid our world of evil.”

“I can’t answer that. Like most people, I just don’t know.”

“Neither did my father. But being a rational man of science, he wanted to find out. And so he dedicated his life and sacrificed his family’s happiness in pursuit of the truth. He spent decades investigating ancient ruins in search of clues. And in the end, what he found was so unfathomable that it literally pushed him to the brink of madness.”

“What did he find?”

Mick closes his eyes, his voice inflection softening. “Evidence. Evidence deliberately and painstakingly left for us. Evidence that points to the existence of a presence, a presence so malevolent that its ascension will signal the end of humanity.”

“Again, I don’t understand.”

“I can’t explain it, all I know is that—somehow—I can feel its presence growing stronger.”

He’s struggling to remain rational. Keep him talking
. “You say this presence is malevolent. How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“You’re not giving me a whole lot to go on. And the Mayan calendar’s not what I’d call evidence—”

“The calendar’s only the tip of the iceberg. There are extraordinary, unexplainable landmarks scattered across the face of this planet, astronomically aligned wonders, yet all pieces of a single, giant puzzle. Even the world’s greatest skeptics can’t refute their existence. The pyramids of Giza and Chichén Itza. The temples of Angkor Wat and Teotihuacan, Stonehenge, the Piri Re’is maps, and the drawings along the Nazca desert. It took decades of intense labor to erect these ancient marvels, the methodology of which is still a mystery to us. My father discovered a united intelligence behind all of this, the same intelligence responsible for the creation of the Mayan calendar. Of greater importance is the fact that each of these landmarks is linked to a common purpose, the meaning of which has been lost over the millennium.”

“And their purpose is?”

“The salvation of humanity.”

Foletta’s right. He really believes this
. “Let me get this straight. Your father believed that each of these ancient sites was designed to save mankind. How can a pyramid or a bunch of desert drawings save us? And save us from what? This malevolent presence?”

The dark eyes stare into her soul. “Yes, but something infinitely worse—something that will arrive to destroy humanity on the December solstice. My father and I were close to resolving the mystery before he died, but there are still vital pieces of the puzzle remaining. If only the Mayan codices hadn’t been destroyed.”

“Who destroyed them?”

Mick shakes his head as if disappointed. “Don’t you even know the history of your own ancestors? The creator of the doomsday calendar, the great teacher, Kukulcan, left behind critical information in the ancient Mayan codices. Four hundred years after his departure, Spain invaded the Yucatan. Cortez was a bearded white man. The Maya mistook him for Kukulcan, the Aztecs for Quetzalcoatl. Both civilizations basically lay down and allowed themselves to be conquered, thinking their Caucasian Messiah had returned to save humanity. The Catholic priests took possession of the codices. They must have been pretty frightened by what they read because the fools burned everything, essentially condemning us to death.”

He’s getting worked up
. “I don’t know, Mick. The instructions for the salvation of mankind seem way too important to leave to a bunch of Central American Indians. If Kukulcan was so wise, why didn’t he leave the information somewhere else?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For thinking, for using the logical hemisphere of your brain. The information was too important to leave to a vulnerable culture like the Maya, or any other ancient culture, for that matter. On the Nazca desert in Peru lies a visual, symbolic message, carved into the pampa in precise, four-hundred-foot glyphs. My father and I were close to interpreting the meaning of the message when he died.”

She glances innocently at her watch.

Mick jumps to his feet like a cat, startling her as he grips her shoulders. “Stop treating this as part of your graduation requirements and listen to what I’m saying. Time is a commodity we don’t have—”

She stares into his eyes as he rambles, their faces only inches apart. “Mick, let me go—” She fingers the pen.

“Listen to me—you asked me if I believe humanity will come to an end in four months. My answer is yes—unless I can complete my father’s work. If not, then we’re all going to the—”

Dominique double-clicks the pen over and over, her heart racing, her mind full of fear.

“Dominique, please—I need you to get me out of this asylum before the fall equinox.”

“Why?”
Keep him talking
…

“The equinox is only two weeks away. Its arrival will be announced at every site I mentioned. The Kukulcan pyramid in Chichén Itza will mark the event along its northern balustrade with the descent of the serpent’s shadow. At that moment, Earth will move into an extremely rare galactic alignment. A portal will begin to open at the center of the dark rift of the Milky Way, and the beginning of the end will be upon us.”

He’s raving
… Recalling the photo of one-eyed Borgia, she shifts her weight, readying her knee.

“Dominique, I’m not a lunatic. I need you to take me seriously—”

“You’re hurting me—”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” He releases his grip. “Listen to me, this is vital. My father believed the evil can still be prevented from rising. I need your help—I need you to get me out of here before the equinox—”

Mick turns as Marvis thrusts his fist in front of his face, the pepper spray blinding him.

“No! No, no, no—”

Too flustered to speak, Dominique pushes the guard aside and runs from the room. She stops at the lounge, her pulse racing.

Marvis locks room 714, then ushers her out of the pod.

Mick continues pounding on the door, crying out to her like a wounded animal.

JOURNAL OF

JULIUS GABRIEL

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives, whomsoever they chose … The NEPHILIM were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the MIGHTY men that were of OLD, the MEN of RENOWN.”

—GENESIS 6: 1—2, 4.

T
he Bible. The sacred book of the Jewish and Christian religions. For the archaeologist in search of truth, this document of antiquity can offer vital clues to help fill in the missing gaps in the evolution of man.

Genesis 6 may be the least understood passage in all the Bible, yet it may turn out to be its most revealing. Occurring just before God instructed Noah, it refers to the sons of God and the Nephilim, a name that literally translates into “the fallen ones,” or “they who fell from the sky with fire.”

Who were these “fallen ones,” these “men of renown”? An important clue may be found in the Genesis Apocryphon, one of the ancient texts uncovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In a key passage, Lamech, Noah’s father, questions his wife because he thinks his son’s conception was the result of her having had intercourse with either an Angel or one of their offspring, a Nephilim.